radix-operator

radix-operator

The radix-operator is the central piece of the Radix platform which fully manages the Radix platform natively on Kubernetes. It manages seven custom resource definitions:

• RR - Application registrations
• RA - Application definition/configuration
• RD - Application deployment
• RJ - Application build/deploy jobs
• RE - Application environments
• RAL - Alerts
• RB - Batch jobs

The radix-operator and radix-pipeline are built using Github actions, then the radix-operator is deployed to cluster through a Helm release using the Flux Operator whenever a new image is pushed to the container registry for the corresponding branch. Build and push to container registry is done using Github actions.

Developer information

Development Process

The operator is developed using trunk-based development. The two main components here are radix-operator and radix-pipeline. There is a different setup for each cluster:

• master branch should be used for deployment to dev clusters. When a pull request is approved and merged to master, Github actions build will create a radix-operator:master-latest image and push it to ACR. Flux then installs it into the cluster.
• release branch should be used for deployment to playground and prod clusters. When a pull request is approved and merged to master, and tested ok in dev cluster, we should immediately merge master into release and deploy those changes to playground and prod clusters, unless there are breaking changes which needs to be coordinated with release of our other components. When the master branch is merged to the release branch, Github actions build will create a radix-operator:release-latest image and push it to ACR. Flux then installs it into the clusters.

The radix-pipeline never gets deployed to cluster, but rather is invoked by the radix-api, and the environment mentioned below is the Radix environment of radix-api (different environments for radix-api therefore use different images of radix-pipeline). Both environments are relevant for both dev/playground as well as prod. The process for deploying radix-pipeline is this:

• master branch should be used for creating the image used in the qa environment of any cluster. When a pull request is approved and merged to master, Github actions build will create a will create a radix-pipeline:master-latest image available in ACR of the subscription
• release branch should be used for image used in the prod environment of any cluster. When a pull request is approved and merged to master, and tested ok in qa environment of any cluster, we should immediately merge master into release and build image used in the prod environment of any cluster, unless there are breaking changes which needs to be coordinated with release of our other components. When the master branch is merged to the release branch, Github actions build will create a radix-pipeline:release-latest image available in ACR of the subscription.

Want to contribute? Read our contributing guidelines

Dependencies management

As of 2019-10-28, radix-operator uses go modules. See Using go modules for more information and guidelines.

Generating mocks

We use gomock to generate mocks used in unit test. You need to regenerate mocks if you make changes to any of the interface types used by the application.

make mocks

Procedure to release to cluster

The radix-operator and code is referred to from radix-api through go modules. We follow the semantic version as recommended by go. radix-operator has three places to set version:

• version in charts/radix-operator/Chart.yaml - indicate changes in Chart
• appVersion in charts/radix-operator/Chart.yaml - indicates changes in radix-operator logic
• tag in git repository - matching to the version of appVersion in charts/radix-operator/Chart.yaml

version and appVersion is shown for radix-operator when running command helm list

appVersion is shown in swagger-ui of the radix-operator API.

To publish a new version of radix-operator:

• When Pool Request with changes is reviewed and code is ready to merge to mastert branch - change version and/or appVersion in charts/radix-operator/Chart.yaml
• After merging to the master branch - switch to master branch and run commands:

go mod tidy
make test
git tag v1.0.0
git push origin v1.0.0

It is then possible to reference radix-operator from radix-api through adding github.com/equinor/radix-operator v1.0.0 to the go.mod file.

Radix-pipeline

We need to build from both master (used by QA environment) and release (used by Prod environment) in both dev and prod subscriptions. We should not merge to release branch before QA has passed. Merging to master or release branch will trigger Github actions build that handles this procedure. The radix-pipeline make use of:

• radix-tekton
• radix-image-builder

Radix-operator

For development/staging we need to deploy from master branch while for production we need to deploy from release branch. We should not merge to release branch before QA has passed. Merging to master or release branch will trigger Github actions build that handles this procedure.

Operator helm chart

For changes to the chart the same procedure applies as for changes to the code. For development/staging we need to deploy from master branch while for production we need to deploy from release branch. We should not merge to release branch before QA has passed. We should never release Helm chart to playground or prod cluster, as this is now completely handled by Flux operator. If we want to test chart changes we need to disable Flux operator in the development cluster and use the following procedure to release the chart into the cluster:

1. Go to development cluster
2. git checkout <branch>
3. Onetime

       helm init --client-only
   

4. for master branch: make helm-up ENVIRONMENT=dev (will release latest version of helm chart in ACR to cluster)
5. for custom branch:

       make build-operator ENVIRONMENT=dev
       make helm-up ENVIRONMENT=dev OVERIDE_BRANCH=true
   

Updating Radix CRD types

The client-go SDK requires strongly typed objects when dealing with CRDs so when you add a new type to the spec, you need to update pkg/apis/radix/v1/types.go typically. In order for these objects to work with the SDK, they need to implement certain functions and this is where you run the code-generator tool from Kubernetes. Generate the strongly type client for Radix v1 objects. code-gen will automatically install the required tooling:

make code-gen

This will generate pkg/apis/radix/v1/zz_generated.deepcopy.go and pkg/client directory.

This file/directory should NOT be edited.

CRD yaml files are generated with [controller-gen(https://pkg.go.dev/sigs.k8s.io/controller-tools/cmd/controller-gen), and are stored in the charts/radix-operator/templates directory. The CRD schema generates use comment markers. Read more about supported markers here. Generate CRD yaml files whenever you make changes to any of the types in pkg/apis/radix/v1/.

Currently, only the CRD for RadixBatch and RadixApplication is generated.

make crds

This will also regenerate a json schema for RadixApplication into ./json-schema/radixapplication.json. This schema can be used in code editors like VS Code to get auto complete and validation when editing a radixconfig.yaml file.

If you wish more in-depth information, read this

Security Principle

The radix-operator reacts on events to the custom resource types defined by the platform, the RadixRegistration, the RadixApplication, the RadixDeployment, the RadixJob and the RadixEnvironment. It cannot be controlled directly by any platform user. It's main purpose is to create the core resources when the custom resources appears, which will live inside application and environment namespaces for the application. Access to a namespace is configured as RBAC manifests when the namespace is created, which main purpose is to isolate the platform user applications from one another. For more information on this see this. Another is to define the NetworkPolicy, to ensure no pod can access another pod, outside of its namespace.

Automated build and deployment

Pull request checking

The radix-operator makes use of GitHub Actions for build checking in every pull request to the master branch. Refer to the configuration file of the workflow for more details.

Build and deploy

The radix-operator utilizes Github actions build for automated build and push to container registries (ACR) when a branch is merged to master or release branch. Refer to the configuration file for more details